Social approach for forestry development in Indonesia is a requirement to increase community welfare

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The title above is adequately long. It intended to emphasise the main concern need to be put in Forestry sector, i.e.; community welfare, Forestry development and sociology approach.

In the Research Expose Seminar that was held by FORDA Makassar (Balai Penelitian Kehutanan Makassar) at Swiss-Bel Inn, Makassar – 28 June 2012, under the seminar theme: the Role of Science and Technology for Forestry Development and Community Welfare in Wallace region, I delivered paper presentation entitled: Increasing Social Capital of Farmer Forest Groups sustainably.

I received heaps of interesting responses and questions, especially in dealing with community participation, welfare and social capital. Herewith, below, I would like to share some of those.

Responses I received were from various background, such as local government, central government, NGO and forestry extension staff, i.e.:

– It was difficult to deal with community – they are so ‘fuzzy’, i.e. low participation, low motivation, low learning capability. In this sense, what was the cause of these reasons?

– Is there any ‘recipe’ to deal with community to maximise the impact, especially impact to community?

– If there was a government project (example: HKM-Community Forestry), the project was successfully undertaken and providing fruitful results, but, it seemed the local government was not able to ‘grab’ those provided potential positive impact, especially, to enhance community welfare and groups’ capacity. What happened was that – based on experiences – when the government project finished no longer of positive results from the project existed. The worst thing was that community went back to their previous nature or situation as prior to the project executed.

– FFGs were in up and down condition. Up, when groups were attached in a government project/s and Down when there were was no further project or the project was stopped. In this case, what was the effort need to be undertaken to empower FFGs?

– Another feedback was that in Bulukumba, forestry programs was assumed to be paralleled as the emerge of wild boars, ruining their seedlings. It was harmful for them. It supposed to happen due to less coordination between Dinas and FFGs.

Responding to those aforementioned feedback, my responses were:

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